By Barry Giles In recent days, big-name CEOs of large corporations have come out to support global efforts in reducing carbon – despite the lack of support from the U.S. Federal government. Many of them are already embracing the scientific facts that support the growing industry of benchmarking existing buildings and carbon reductions. Here in the [...]

By Barry Giles The BREEAM standard for green building certification is new to America and naturally there have been a lot of questions about the program. We frequently hear a number of concerns: How solid is this new rating system? Why should my company risk using BREEAM? How does a BREEAM certification bring value to my [...]

By Barry Giles Up until the last few years, there have been few options for Class B and C buildings to cost-effectively benchmark and certify buildings using available green building rating systems. Since then, quite a few new programs have entered the American green building market. BREEAM is one of those programs. However, BREEAM is not [...]

By Barry Giles Benchmarking existing buildings can be complex, especially in today’s marketplace with more and more options becoming available. It is hard to decide between a free energy standard or something with depth and a higher price point. Some programs may involve a long-term contract and results that take months to report. Long-term contracts do [...]

By Barry Giles When BREEAM was first created in 1990 it was developed as a way to build sustainable new construction. It worked so well, all other green building rating systems were modeled on the original BREEAM system. Yet new construction is just a tiny percentage of the entire built environment, and every newly constructed building [...]

By Barry Giles BREEAM, the original green building rating system, was created by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in 1990. First established in 1921, BRE is a world-leading, multi-disciplinary building science center carrying out its mission to improve the built environment. BRE leverages cutting-edge research to develop a range of services and standards used around the [...]

By Barry Giles Lately new building rating systems seem to be coming out every other day. New buzzwords like “Health & Well-being,” “Fit-this and Fit-that,” or “a digital transformation” are popping up when talking about the green building movement. New rating systems in the marketplace can be great for motivating buildings to [...]

BREEAM USA is a partnership between BRE Group, the world’s leading authority on all aspects of the built environment, and BuildingWise, the award-winning US-based LEED certification consultancy, established to provide a sustainability certification and improvement solution to the 5.6 million existing buildings in the United States not covered by existing green building programs.